Chapter 25: A scary individual.

And so, my own pressure crushed him.

I saw as his face drained of color, becoming as white as a sheet. The person who bragged about his cultivation earlier just found out that my own was much more advanced than his, because that's all that mattered to these people.

I saw the looks this one had given his fallen opponent passed out on the ground; it wasn't pain at having wounded another person or displeasure at having gone way too far; it was happiness at seeing his inferior opponent on the ground, bleeding.

I shook my head and sighed, "Whatever, just leave."

I gave up.

What could I possibly do to change the mindset of these people?

Was it purely arrogance to even think that I could do anything about it?

Probably, I couldn't do anything; I was the weird one here, not them; they were the normal ones here, bred by this world's culture, while I had ideas foreign to this place.

Respecting other cultures and all of that, right?

But could I truly respect a culture that pushed children to fight each other until an inch from death? That made a people that desired to purely seek more and more power? No, I couldn't.

Their way of life was wrong, and of that I was certain.

Yes, senior, thank you for your leniency." He apologized with fear evident in his eyes. Because he was at the second level and I was at the eighth, he would have had an even bigger laugh had I been any weaker than he was.

I waved my hand to dismiss him, and leave he did, scurrying away like a child that had been scolded by his parent.

How anticlimactic.

The challenges went on, with the Profound Palace losing more than they had won, and I took care of every single one of them, uncaring about which clan, sect, or whatever it was that they came from.

None of them got as injured as the second person, mostly just superficial wounds or shallow cuts and bruises, which I was grateful for.

But it didn't last forever; as we were reaching the end of the event, the second poor bastard came and decided to seriously injure his opponent.

This time it wasn't life-threatening, just much trickier to deal with than the last time. Who the hell decided to just set his opponent on fire?

This time, even the veins in this poor lad's legs were all scorched, the energy from the attack having penetrated greater depth than any other injury that I had dealt with before, and for the first time, I grew unsure of how to deal with this.

Had it just been some burns, I could have done something, even if not a lot since I didn't have any medication for burns on me. Since I didn't think I'd even face such a thing at a banquet, I didn't even know this energy could manifest as fire.

But this was completely out of my area of expertise.

"Here," someone said as I reflexively caught what I was thrown. I looked at the small container and saw a lotion inside of it, and finally I turned to look at the person that threw it to me. "For the burns, it seemed like you didn't have anything for that."

I nodded at him gratefully and went back to work, using a couple runes to cool and evenly distribute the lotion in a small layer over the burnt areas, and then wrapped them up in the bandages that I had brought, packing them normally.

I scanned it again, and seeing that the flesh wound was fine, I concentrated on the weird metaphysical and magical wound.

I had no idea how to deal with magical burns, but it seemed that the lotion had some effects on that.

The injury had stopped worsening, which gave me better room to breathe, but it didn't seem to be healing either, and the situation seemed ugly.

I had no idea how to deal with this; the energy veins were all scrambled, their walls weakened, and it didn't seem like he could circulate any energy inside of them, as when the energy naturally flowed in those areas, it seemed to leave the veins to be released in the air.

I doubted he could utilize it anymore, but I had an idea for a treatment; I would have to study it. I needed my tools—the bigger ones—and I probably needed to create new ones too. This was too much for the moment.

I shook my head and sighed; this wasn't something I could deal with as first aid. I looked around to search for anyone from the Profound Palace that I could talk to about the situation, but they were far away, discussing the situation among each other.

Among shouts of 'impossible, he has mastered the sun, whatever art!' Or 'he must be crippled for life now!', I scanned my eyes over the people and identified who I was looking for: the Palace Chief.

I turned my head to look at the person that had given me the lotion, seeing him looking at me intently and with interest, probably because of my actions, and I told him, "Thank you for the help, but I need to bring him to my clinic; I can't do anything here."

"I see, my name is Tie Hengjun; may I know your name?" He replied with a small smile on his face.

Huh, it was rare to meet any decent person in this forsaken world, but who knows? "Just call me Doc, or Doctor, or anything really; I need to talk to the Palace Chief now."

I activated my movement technique and disappeared in an instant, appearing next to the palace chief right after, leaving behind me a stunned young master.

"Doctor, how is that disciple doing?" The old man asked, his eyes widening after seeing the sheer speed at which I had moved.

"Non-lethal, but I need my tools at the clinic to hope to do anything for the injuries to his profound veins," I replied, making sure that I explained the situation perfectly. "I need to bring him to my place."

"Impossible! You can heal such injuries to the profound veins!" the old man shouted as his eyes widened.

I inwardly rolled my eyes at the dramatic old man and replied, "I need to try to find out, but I'll find a way eventually."

"I'll leave him to you then, Doctor; I will try to prevent any injuries as heavy as this one. I apologize for my people's poor performance. I hope you won't see us too unfavorably." He said with a wry smile on his face that it made sense, given that most of the injured came from his Profound Palace.

But honestly, I couldn't care less.

"I'll do my best to bring him back to full health, but if any injury arises, from any sect at all, that your people can't deal with, just bring them to me at the clinic, and I'll see what I can do." And like that, I disappeared once again, my movement technique bringing me away faster than most people there could see.

The smile from Palace Chief Qin's face disappeared as he saw the main person on his mind disappear. His speed was something that nobody at his cultivation stage should be able to achieve. He turned to a disciple by his side and said, "Go call Lan Xueruo for me; I have a few questions about our guest."

"Yes, Palace Chief." The disciple replied as he left without wasting a second, leaving behind him a man with sharp eyes, trained in the direction that the doctor had left.

After a few moments of waiting, she asked, "Have you called for me, Palace Chief Qin?"

"Yes, Junior Xueruo, what can you tell me about that Doctor you've invited? How much about him are you aware of?" He asked, his tone authoritative but containing a hint of softness as well.

"Not much, I'm afraid," replied the girl as she thought back to what she knew about the mysterious man. "I just discovered what I think is his real name, but he seems to have renounced it, as well as very few personal details about his early life; his character, however, is definitely trustworthy."

The old man stroked his beard, thinking about those details. The doctor's image in his mind seemed to become more and more hazy. "Is that so? What makes you trust him that much?"

"His complete disregard for material wealth—for one, his lack of greed for wealth—is unlike anyone I've ever met; he definitely doesn't act like a cultivator." She replied, her words sure; she had studied the man's actions in detail, and the more she discovered, the more curious she was about him.

"In that case, what are your plans for him?" He asked.

"I'm planning on bringing him to our side; his mind is fresh, his ideas have an entirely different perspective, and we shouldn't care about how much it costs us because it will probably be worth it." She replied with a serene expression as she relayed these incredible opinions about a man she had barely met more than a handful of times.

"And what makes you say that?"

"Well, he has given me a small part of his research as an afterthought; it was a little something to integrate an explanation he was trying to give me, but I knew far too little to fully understand, so he gave me a small book, written with the clearest terms that I've ever seen. I managed to understand a small part of it for now, but it was enough to progress my cultivation by leaps and bounds." She replied, her eyes shining as if stars were in the night sky as she thought about just what kind of insane understanding of the world that man was hiding in his mind.

A sly grin found its way to the elder's face as he asked, "Are you willing to share this book that he has given you? I will naturally reward you for this big contribution to the Palace."

"I'm afraid not, Palace Chief; this insight is not something I'm at liberty to share; I wouldn't want to anger the doctor's backer." She replied while showing a sly smile of her own, her eyes scanning the rest of the hall to make sure that nobody was listening in on their conversation.

"What kind of backer? I thought that he was a wondering cultivator, but it makes sense that someone that talented and that far along in his cultivation didn't get there on his own." The man replied, wondering inwardly just what kind of power could bring up such an excellent man.

It might have been a sect, but the seven major sects of the Empire wouldn't let such a seedling go around uncontrolled, especially as he presented himself as a doctor rather than a cultivator.

It might have been a powerful hidden clan or family sending their heir out into the world to gain experience to lead their group to a brighter future.

But that also made no sense; if that had been the case, he would be fighting for resources rather than selling his services cheaply to the mortals of the city.

But then, a particular detail about her earlier words caught his attention: "Greed for wealth, why did you specify that part?"

She chose her words carefully, but it wasn't hard, as she had detected these details long ago: "Because he's definitely greedy, and more than that, definitely ambitious beyond measure, just that his greed doesn't entail wealth or resources."

The old man mumbled, "In that case, what is he aiming for? What is he greedy for?"

"Knowledge, he says himself, that he is not a cultivator but a doctor and a researcher, and I can testify that his knowledge might be beyond even the royal doctors of the Empire; you've seen yourself what he managed to do today, without the aid of even a single alchemical pill, but just pure energy manipulation and profound techniques." She explained, recalling every time she had seen that doctor pull something out that she hadn't even thought possible.

His tendrils of energy, moving bones and repairing blood vessels perfectly, healed injuries that might have crippled or outright killed a cultivator without such medical care. He returned to being able to walk merely minutes or hours after he was done.

The old man turned around to look toward the disciple that had allegedly been bleeding internally; his eyes pierced into the disciple, who was sitting on a chair, still recuperating but refusing to leave the banquet hall before the end, to look into how the doctor had handled such a crippling injury.

It was a mesh of profound energy, but not just one, but tens of them, all applied with perfect precision on the ruptured blood vessels. But what was most incredible was that those patches were slowly but surely becoming smaller, their sides retracting while leaving in the newly exposed areas newly made fresh tissue, regenerated by some kind of divine technique incorporated in those mashes.

But unfortunately, the Palace Chief couldn't see such minute changes; it would take days for the meshes to completely disappear and leave behind perfectly healthy tissue, but it was an unbelievable achievement either way.

"I agree with your assessment; if you believe in his potential, try to find out more about him, especially his background. We need to keep such a resource close to us, but we will leave him be if he's too dangerous to mingle with. I give you full jurisdiction on this matter." He explained his decision.

Whatever or whoever could teach such a terrifying person, someone who could stand up to him and not show even a hint of fear or hesitation as he held their wrist in place, putting himself on the line to help a complete stranger in front of someone many major realms above him, it definitely had to be someone even more terrifying.

And it was definitely someone he wished to befriend but, at the same time, dreaded making an enemy out of.